Evolution’s Bumper Sticker War Against Intelligent Design

In a modern world where religion often finds itself at odds with science, it’s worth keeping in mind that Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, was God’s man.  After he returned from his five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, the Anglican naturalist struggled to reconcile his faith with his theory of evolution by natural selection. As can be expected in a world where the fittest survive, evolution won out over creationism. Today we remember Darwin’s legacy by way of a small plastic fish. A fish with legs.

With faith and science seesawing their way through American politics and public school curricula, the Darwin fish’s legs stand firmly in support of science despite the country’s flagging performance in global surveys of science savviness. Nonetheless, with the divine Jesus fish little changed from the primordial soup whence it first arose, it would appear the Darwin fish and its plethora of spin-offs has more than just a leg up on the competition. They have udders, tail-fins, and some wrathful noodly appendages.

That Other Fish in the Sea
The Darwin fish, a spoof of the fish-shaped Christian symbol, first set foot on dry land in the 1980s as an emblem of atheism. Much like finches flitting from island to island, the Darwin fish quickly spread from leaflets and flyers to t-shirts, bumper stickers and ultimately its most famous format, car plaques. To say the fish has evolved since its inception is an understatement. Today, the pantheon of pisces ranges from the religious to the punny to the downright geeky.

Take for example the overweight Buddha fish, or the Hindu fish bedecked with pendulous udders, or Silicon Valley’s own Linux and GNU fish. Space junkies geek out with a USS Enterprise-tailed Trek fish, Alien fish, Science fish, or pointy-eared Yoda fish. There’s even a penis-tipped Freud fish.

The main thrust of the fish, however, remains central to the evolution versus religion debate. Some, like the wrench-toting Evolve fish, are subtle. Others, such as the ProCreation Fish (an Evolution fish humping a Jesus fish), and the Truth fish (pictured eating a Darwin fish), less so. But if any fish encapsulates the twenty-first century grudge match between faith and science, it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster “fish.”

Have Your Faith and Eat It, Too
In May 2005, Prophet Bobby Henderson wrote a satirical letter to the Kansas State Board of Education demanding that an equal amount of time be allotted to teaching an alternative theory of his own creation, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). This was in response to the board’s acceptance of a new intelligent-design lesson plan developed for high-school science classes. Soon thereafter, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (think noodles + meatball eyes) was born, followed by the March 2006 publication of the FSM Church’s Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The Church of the FSM’s secretive followers, self-proclaimed Pastafarians, believe that the invisible FSM created the universe; that He uses His Noodly Appendages to change scientific outcomes to conceal his presence; that He is punishing the world with hurricanes, earthquakes and global warming because of the decline in pirates and pirate activity; that Heaven has a stripper factory and beer volcanoes as far as the eye can see; and that every Friday is a holiday.

The FSM Church’s answer to the Darwin fish – the letters “FSM” inside a noodly appendaged, meatball-eyed creature – has topped the sales charts of Ring of Fire Enterprises, the plaque’s manufacturer and distributor. According to co-owner Nona Williams, Ring of Fire Enterprises has sold over 13,000 Flying Spaghetti Monster fish, 5,500 Darwin fish (their second-best seller), and 3,000 of the FSM Church’s Pirate Fish (fourth-best seller) since the FSM debuted in 2005.

The Poll Dance
But can plastic fish – or a plate of spaghetti and meatballs – really serve as a barometer for the United State’s complex view on faith and science, on who created what when how? Well not really, that’s why we have opinion polls.

A 2006 Gallup Poll found that 46% of Americans believe that God created humans as they are today, whereas 35% invoke evolution under God’s guidance. Only 13% of respondents agreed that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.” These percentages have fluctuated litte in the past 25 years.

What has changed, however, are the buzz words. The breakdown of a 2005 Gallup Poll showed that 61% of Americans think evolution belongs in the public school curriculum, just slightly ahead of the percentage of people who think creationism belongs there too (54%). But 2005 saw the first appearance of another “alternative” to evolution, intelligent design, which 43% of respondents thought it should be included in schools as well.

This ongoing struggle might be at the root of abysmal US scores on NSF science literacy tests. When asked the True or False question, “The universe began with a huge explosion,” only 35% of Americans and Russians answered True, compared to South Koreans (67%) and Japanese (63%). Similarly, 44% of Americans and Russians answered True to, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” well behind Japan (78%), China and the European Union (70%).

But there’s a twist. When these same questions were prefaced with “according to the theory of evolution” and “according to astronomers,” American respondents were more likely to answer the questions correctly (74 and 62%, respectively).

However you look at it, America’s fascination with the Darwin fish is more than a fad. It’s a reflection of the ongoing struggle between faith and science that has confronted Darwin and Dawkins alike. But here’s food for thought. If by some hiccup in the space-time continuum young Darwin had ducked into a gift shoppe before setting sail, it’s no small irony that the father of evolutionary thinking would most likely have chosen a Jesus fish to adhere to the Beagle’s briny stern, right next to the “We Drop Anchor for Galapagos Tortoises” bumper sticker.